1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the fields of mobile communication and/or computing devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to the incorporation of bio-metric sensors/monitors in these devices.
2. Background Information
Advances in computer and telecommunication technology have led to wide spread adoption of mobile client devices, from the basic wireless telephones to function rich notebook sized computers that pack the power of a desktop computer. In between are web enabled wireless telephones, palmed sized personal digital assistants (PDA) and so forth. As a result, professionals are virtually always only a few clicks or buttons away from their home offices.
While these capabilities have increased the mobility of modern professionals, they also have contributed to longer work hours and increased stress for the professionals. However, as society in general becomes more health conscious, notwithstanding their busy work schedules, more and more professionals are allocating time to exercise or participate in physical activities. This trend has not gone unnoticed to the application developers, which as a result have become increasingly interested in incorporating bio-metric data in their applications.
Among the modern mobile client devices, unquestionably, wireless mobiles and palm sized PDAs have emerged as the two most popular mobile client devices for modern professionals. Thus, increasingly, artesian are interested in being able to collect bio-metric data using these devices.
A mobile client device, such as a wireless mobile phone or a palm sized personal digital assistant, is provided with a number of sensors and companion programming instructions/circuitry to generate a heart rate reading for a user holding the device. The sensors are used to sense blood flow rate of the user. The sensors are advantageously disposed in a distributed manner, in a number of locations of the mobile client device, to allow collection of multiple blood flow rate readings of the user. The programming instructions/circuitry are used to infer a holding pattern of the device, and generate the heart rate reading using a subset of the sensed data, based at least in part on the inferred holding pattern.
In one embodiment, the sensors are distributively disposed along two edges of the mobile client device, to facilitate collection of blood flow rate data for at least a left hand holding pattern and a right hand holding pattern. In one embodiment, the holding pattern is inferred by comparing the sensed data with one or more reference characteristic profiles. In one embodiment, a set of weights is also selected to normalize the employed sensed data.